"Microsoft’s Israel subsidiary has announced that its general manager, Alon Haimovich, will be stepping down from his position on May 31, after an investigation into the subsidiary's collaboration with the Israeli military."
"The Israeli military, it was found, used Microsoft's Azure cloud-based system to store millions of daily phone calls made by Palestinians, enabling it to capture a much larger pool of everyday Palestinian communication than possible on military servers. According to +972 Magazine, this has created "what is likely one of the world's largest and most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group.""
"Though Microsoft claimed its leadership was unaware of how the Azure cloud system would be used, leaked documents revealed that Israel's military surveillance gave specific instructions for its vision of a project that would store "A million [Palestinian] calls an hour.""
"The Israeli military's Unit 8200 - an intelligence unit comparable to the U.S.'s National Security Agency - had approached Microsoft's CEO in 2021 to work with Microsoft's Azure to create a specific database for its mass surveillance of Palestinians."
Microsoft’s Israel subsidiary announced that its general manager, Alon Haimovich, will leave on May 31 following an investigation into collaboration with the Israeli military. Microsoft ordered the inquiry after reporting by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call found extensive Israeli military use of Microsoft’s Azure platform for surveillance. The military stored millions of daily Palestinian phone calls in Azure, expanding the volume of communications captured beyond what military servers could hold. The resulting surveillance data collection has influenced operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Leaked documents indicated the military provided specific instructions for a project to store “A million [Palestinian] calls an hour,” and Unit 8200 approached Microsoft’s CEO in 2021 to build a database for mass surveillance.
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